Figuring out this Complice thing

[malcolm]

@drtall

Could you imagine a world in which Complice has integrations with “intention providers”? e.g. for my Work goal I am copying intentions out of JIRA. I might start using Workflowy for a different goal. I’m already using Beeminder as an intention provider for certain other things.

Definitely. I am of course wary of that causing staleness, but I guess as long as the user is still making a decision for each item that gets pulled in, it’ll probably be fine. Although yeah, if the providers get stale… Anyway, I expect stuff in this space to be on the roadmap at some point, probably with 2016.

[malcolm]

@nepomuk

Giving us a “Boilerplate” page, where we can list the things we want to be imported every day (essentially baking in a version of your autocomplete script) and then putting an “import boilerplate!” button on the intentions page would be great.

Yeah, I’m becoming more and more convinced this is a good idea. I’ve got a lot on my plate this week, but you guys can expect this to show up as a feature quite soon.

[drtall]

@malcolm

this week

Well played!

[oulfis]

@nepomunk, my understanding is that Complice is well-suited to promoting continuous progress on large-scale goals where there’s no firm script for success or the next step may not always be clear. So, looking at Malcolm’s goals, things like “onboarding with Complice” and “sharing creations,” where part of the value of Complice is sitting down and asking yourself, “what is a way I can make progress on my goal to share more of my creations?”

I’ve basically concluded that Complice isn’t useful for me this year, while I am doing my coursework for my PhD; I typically have at least two major tasks due per day, so the next step for my “get a PhD” goal is always going to be “put out the fires.” (Incidentally, I am really liking OmniFocus and its ability to absorb my enormous tangle of deadlines and let me flag/defer tasks to make each day’s to-do list).

However, I am really excited about Complice for years two to ??? of my PhD, when I will have the goals of “write a dissertation” and “publish three articles,” but I might go six months between deadlines. If I don’t regularly think about ways to make progress on those goals, they are likely to stagnate and fail by default.

So, my guess is that the main reason is: 4. Because you need to be prompted to invent the next thing to do.

[dreev]

@philip

Every other todo list app on the planet [citation needed] encourages accumulated cruft. Some of them will fade out neglected entries, etc, but they don’t throw stuff away or force you to rethink it.

I love Trello’s feature (what they call a Power-Up, that you have to enable for each Trello board) of fading out neglected cards. Combined with the neglect-minding feature of beemind.me it’s working nicely for me as a way to force myself to revisit to-do items and avoid cruft and task-starvation.

[malcolm]

@nepomuk

Are there any plans to allow recurring tasks in Complice?

This is now a thing! It’s hidden behind a hotkey while I’m testing it. Would love to get feedback from all of you Press alt-b to edit your daily boilerplate and alt-shift-b to insert it into the intentions editor.

[nepomuk]

IT’S SO GOOD!!! Absolute life-changer. Complice just got about twice as useful for me. I freaking love it!!!

[mary]

My timer and my accountability partner’s timer aren’t in sync, so when we’re in the room together, we have different breaks. It’s not different by a lot (under a minute) but I’m just providing this as an FYI.

[jcrosenb]

I’ve been messing around with the boilerplate and I really like it! One additional option I’d really love would be to have an easy way to add yesterday’s incomplete tasks to today. If it’s an opt-in rather than opt-out (i.e. each task needs to be individually selected) then I don’t think staleness would be a problem - generally I end up getting only halfway through a task since I have a lot of big projects, and I’d rather work on several things a little bit every day than let something slide entirely for too long.

That goes well with the way I’m finding I use Complice anyway - it’s kind of an intermediary between my to-do list and my calendar. I add tasks to my to-do list as they arrive, and it’s the repository for every single thing that I have to do. Then, when I’m setting my intentions, I go to Complice and choose which of those to-do items I want to actually accomplish today. In the end I review, and everything I finish gets taken off my to-do list. It’d be wonderful if, eventually, the to-do list part could get incorporated into Complice. Then I could just drag-and-drop which things I’m actually doing today, and check them off once I finish them.

Another feature I found myself looking for is the ability to beemind Complice intentions not achieved. It would go into a do-less goal, and would help me be better at budgeting my time and not getting dragged around willy-nilly as the day goes by. Currently I’m just beeminding pomodoros and whether I set my intentions, but a do-less goal for not being overly ambitious might be useful.

Again, thanks for creating this neat app - I’m enjoying using it, and it goes well with Beeminder!

[keelyellenmarie]

I’m currently figuring out Complice myself, and it occurred to me that the weekly review would be a great time to assess up-coming deadlines and priorities and make an “upcoming” list of things that need to get done that week. Then those things could be listed below the intentions box for ease of adding to daily intentions. Currently, the “top priorities” sort of allows this, but in each of my main work projects I typically have 2-3 MUST DO things per week, so one “top priority” doesn’t really cover it.

The key to prevent staleness is that this list of things would expire at the weekly review every week. So this still wouldn’t be a tool for long-term planning, just a little extra prompting for the next week.

For the time being, I’m doing my weekly reviews in a browser window next to my calendar and a bunch of different todo lists in evernote (I used to use ToDoist, but for whatever reason my Todoist systems go stale so fast, no matter how much I beemind them). But long term, I really need to figure out a way to do project tracking/task management that won’t go stale. Complice is helping me get more focused about planning my days, but I’ve still yet to find a good way to integrate all my systems. :-/

[akraticguy]

So there’re so nerdy people who use professional project management software to track their personal life 0o ?!

I thought that I was the weirdo

Anyway, if it works for you, that’s good.

[oulfis]

@oulfis

I’ve basically concluded that Complice isn’t useful for me this year, while I am doing my coursework for my PhD; I typically have at least two major tasks due per day, so the next step for my “get a PhD” goal is always going to be “put out the fires.” (Incidentally, I am really liking OmniFocus and its ability to absorb my enormous tangle of deadlines and let me flag/defer tasks to make each day’s to-do list).

However, I am really excited about Complice for years two to ??? of my PhD, when I will have the goals of “write a dissertation” and “publish three articles,” but I might go six months between deadlines. If I don’t regularly think about ways to make progress on those goals, they are likely to stagnate and fail by default.

Wow, I apparently wrote this four years ago, and I am impressed by how accurate it was. During coursework, I needed OmniFocus to manage what was probably HUNDREDS of tiny deadlines. At the start of every term, I’d put all my reading, writing, teaching, and grading commitments into OmniFocus, and then I’d desperately try to stay ahead of that tide all term. But now that I’m deep in the dissertation process, OmniFocus is gathering dust and my day begins and ends with Complice. Thinking “based on how it went today, how can I get closer to graduation tomorrow?” before bed every night is hugely helpful.